“Smiter of the High and Mighty”

Tag Archives: FoI

Thanks to the hard work of a MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC, Frank Church, a number of emails between Bristol City Council and Malaysian multinational, YTL, potential developers of an arena at Filton were finally released under FoI in August. This saw, even, the Nazi Post bothering to read some emails in brief flurry of investigative activity courtesy of their local government correspondent, the fragrant Esme “DAN” Ashcroft.

“During the second of three extraordinary scrutiny meetings on June 20,” explained Ms Ashcroft, “Liberal Democrat councillor for Knowle Gary Hopkins asked when council officers were told to start drawing up plans for a MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT on Temple Island.”

Colin “Head Boy” Molton, the reverend’s PERSONALLY APPOINTED £1.5k a day regeneration chief replied to Hopkins: “It was around LATE AUTUMN last year when the YTL proposition came to the fore.”

However, observes Ms Ashcroft, “Freedom of Information (FoI) documents seen by Bristol Live reveal a SENIOR COUNCIL OFFICER was exchanging emails with Malaysian investment firm YTL LAST APRIL about the prospect of an arena in the Brabazon hangar at Filton Airfield.”

The senior council officer exchanging these emails was former Bristol City Council Strategic Director Place, Barra Mac “NUGGET” Ruairi, the man personally running Bristol’s arena project until he went to work for YTL, the opposition. But why was the Reverend’s personal property expert (troughing around £200k a year off the rates) Colin “HEAD BOY” Molton telling porkies about these emails?

Perhaps Ms Ashcroft should have paid a little more attention to Mac Nugget’s emails and the dates they contain? (To be continued …)

Mayor Spin has recently been making a fuss about the cost of FREEDOM OF INFORMATION requests to his secretive dodgy dealing council bosses from members of the public trying to find out what he’s up to with their money.

At a recent council meeting Mayor Bullshit even blustered that “HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF POUNDS” were being spent getting his dubious council bosses to answer these enquiries from the public.

This is not strictly true. The amount actually spent on Freedom of Information by Bristol City Council is around £150k a year, in the context of a total communications budget of £2.5m. This means just six per cent of this huge budget goes towards telling Bristolians what they actually WANT TO KNOW.

That means Mayor Liar spends 94 per cent of this budget – or £2.35m – on marketing his OUTRIGHT LIES and DELUSIONARY BULLSHIT to long-suffering Bristolians. This also means he’s able to employ 43 PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MARKETING OFFICERS to spin his personal point of view at us. The third highest amount of PRs and associated hangers-on employed by a council anywhere in the country!